Wednesday, March 11, 2015

I'm Not Interested In Suffering With You

The 2nd of the 3-hour classes started off with a bang when a fellow teacher asserted that Republicans attack the President because of a bias due to his race. No, it's not that we disagree with his policies or think he's a moron, it's all because he's black. I'm coming more and more to the belief that liberals are actually incapable of believing that anyone can hold views other than theirs; they're not smart enough to accept this, so they have to assign reasons that they can understand--and they certainly understand racism. They practice it day in and day out, don't they, along with other types of discrimination.

Anyway, that comment was considered ok, and in fact was solicited by the instructor.

37 minutes into the training, President Obama was brought up again. The instructor is biased, clearly, and while she teaches us about "filters" she's completely oblivious to her own processing of any information with which she doesn't agree.

Some of the people in the class are so unaware that they don't even see their own stereotypes. The same goes with cognitive dissonance, the definition of which was provided: biases that influence a person to selectively accept or reject ideas and impressions on the basis of their conformance with currently held assumptions and beliefs. It's amazing to have people talk about flaws in others that they themselves are draped in.

The instructor continued to assume that none of us are self-reflective enough to be anything other than ignorant of our "deficiencies". That's a very interesting assumption, don't you think? Is it because we're white?

She gave us the following handout which we didn't discuss at all. I've underlined some of the more interesting parts; I don't think I need to provide any commentary, as their intent is pretty clear:

Last week's session was a waste of time but relatively harmless. This week's was insulting and devolved into being offensive.

Since 18 hours of professional development are required (it's included as part of our salary), and since sometimes our district does "interesting" things with pay, I asked my principal if I'd get paid for the 6 hours I've already wasted if I do not go to next week's training. Without getting too much into the weeds, another teacher and I will not attend the final training and will instead conduct some Common Core-related work for three hours--although it won't all be at one time!

I honestly don't understand what kind of hatred must be behind people who think the way the CTA does--and remember, the CTA is the instructor's employer. Whenever I start to feel sorry for them, though--because it must be difficult carrying around that kind of hatred of others--I remember what it feels like to have them direct that hatred at me, and then I just leave them alone to suffer on their own. I am not interested in suffering with them.

It would be interesting, especially in California, to try to attack this using anti-Asian biases. Asians were heavily discriminated in this state, with restrictions on land ownership and such written into the state's founding documents.

Surely Californians of Asian decent have valid grievances? Surely they deserve protection from ant-Asian bigots? Surely they are discriminated against based on generalities which do not treat each member of the group as an individual? Anti-Asian quotas at some of our most prestigious institutions should be reversed in favor of positive discrimination for this historically maltreated group.

Racism is the excuse of the scoundrel and has made real racism something nobody can fight. I have a theory that we've become a society more interested in belonging to the winning group than in having any real values or morals on a personal level. Too many are shallow, fearful and unwilling to upset the applecart because they cannot face what might happen.

Here's my rant and by the way, go read the article at Fortune Magazine because it echoes much of what is wrong with education and our society. By the way, the invite to Texas is still open. We need math teachers....just saying.